Hell Freezes Over
by AngmarBucket
Summary: Wherein we see what kind of physical and psychological effects the secret prison might have on its most notorious inmate, the Cobra Commander. No one can endure such extreme conditions and escape unscathed... (Retaliation fic)


Cold.

Logically, he knew he could not be cold. His suit was insulated and specifically designed to protect his body from freezing to death in the icy water of his stasis tank. Physically, his body was incapable of becoming cold. It was kept at a perpetually warm temperature, approximately 70 degrees, with only a small margin of variance. As long as he was in this prison, and in the special suit his captors had equipped him with, he would never, purely technically, be in physical discomfort.

Yet he was cold. He felt it every day, as it creeped into his body-or rather, he felt it through this single, never-ending moment that stretched behind and before him without beginning or end. The cold infiltrated his suit, with its tubes and catheters and pumps and monitoring devices, and it touched him like death upon his skin. His flesh prickled and shivered and he longed to curl into himself, to insulate himself and shake it away; to steal any small moment of relief. Yet his whole body was cut off from him; turned against him, its paralytic grip held him like a vice, and no amount of willpower on his part could break through it.

Destro was in the tank beside his, and while the Commander felt nothing for his smug underling's well-being or his sanity, he did desperately want to know if Destro also felt the cold. He wondered if it was just as unbearable for Destro as it was for him, if it had become a part of him as well, or if he felt nothing because there was nothing and the Commander was merely going insane. Despite himself and his hatred, he wanted to know what Destro thought very badly.

Sane or insane, the cold infected his flesh and seeped deep within him. He was not sure why he felt so vulnerable because of it, compared to every other torment and indignity he had so far endured, but its presence was even worse than his isolation, his degradation, and his inability to move. People said he was insane, but they didn't know-they didn't know how sane he really had been after all. Now that he felt the full measure of his mind and the attack upon it, he was determined to preserve it.

_I just have to endure a little longer,_ he told himself. _Just a little more. Storm Shadow, Zartan-they will come for me. They must. Storm Shadow, at least, will not forget about me. He will make sure I am released._

Yet the days, or his personal approximations of days, continued without end; in one endless limbo of time, everything seemed ground to a halt. Stillness and eternity defined every breath. He was sometimes tempted to doubt his rescue. As soon as those thoughts arose he had to crush them before they consumed. From thought came action-even in his inaction. If he doubted even once he would despair and he would lose. So he forced himself to believe he would be free again one day. His captors could do anything they wanted to him, but they couldn't stop his thoughts. Indeed, they hoped to encourage his thoughts and drive him into hopelessness, but he would subvert their torment and make himself stronger.

Yet, day after day, there was only oblivion, and weightlessness, and the bone-chilling cold.

. . .

One nameless day at some unknown time, something finally happened. Normally the prison was like a tomb and the Commander refused to acknowledge it around him. But then it came alive.

At first he noticed nothing. Then two technicians were hovering worriedly over one of the monitors that gauged their vitals. After several tense moments, one motioned frantically and another came running. Then came the guards. Then the doctors.

The Commander longed to look after them as they rushed to Destro's tank, but his head would not turn, and he was forced to study what was happening out of the corner of his eye as best he could. From such an angle, and with the helmet he wore, it was impossible to get a proper look.

He was enraged to see Destro out of his tank a few minutes later and placed on a gurney. With the connection to his chemical feed broken, Destro began to move. He spasmed and writhed, clearly in pain, and the doctors had to hold him down and sedate him. Then they wheeled him out of the room and the Commander was privy to no more.

Envy consumed him in the ensuing hours. Seeing Destro get out first-even under such circumstances-made him want to scream. He raged uselessly in his head, cursing everything and everyone around him. He almost became convinced that Destro had somehow planned the whole thing and was even now escaping without him, plotting his return to Cobra to steal it. The mad thoughts got worse and he had to separate the reality from the fantasy. Destro was intelligent, but he couldn't make his vital signs do whatever he wanted. And he could definitely not escape from this place on his own even if he did somehow manage to trick the computers. The Commander was forced, however, to wait to find out the truth one way or the other. Either way, Destro free in any capacity, while he was still trapped and unable to move, was the ultimate slap in the face.

It was a long time before Destro returned, still on a gurney, apparently unconscious or strongly drugged. Then he was put back in his tank. The sight was both a relief and difficult to watch. It was especially distressing near the end, when Destro suddenly jerked to life, perhaps aware of what was about to happen to him again. Then his whole body seized and he went still. Bitterly, disgusted, the Commander wondered if he had looked like that. He remembered little of his placement in the suit and his submersion. He hadn't been totally there at the time; they had addled him somehow. Then the water rushed above him and he had panicked out of sheer instinct. And then-everything shut down and he had been dead in the water. It had taken him several minutes to accept that he wouldn't drown as he floated motionlessly in the stasis tank.

Recalling the memory, he had to squeeze his eyes shut until he bid it away. He blamed the drugs for how he'd acted then. Normally, he would not have acted like that. He wouldn't have given them such a show.

In a way, he was happy to have Destro back beside him. Somehow, it had been too quiet and lonely without him.

. . .

"That's the most dangerous man in the world," the warden said to some female technician one day, apparently giving her a tour and running his mouth to try to impress her. The warden had stopped them in front of his tank. "The most dangerous man in the world, and we keep him here. Makes you think, doesn't it?"

She nodded. The Commander wondered why his helmet had been outfitted with audio receptors. Perhaps in case of some emergency, but he suspected the warden just wanted to be able to get inside their heads as much as possible.

"Outside, these guys were the baddest, coldest, biggest bosses the world has ever known," the warden continued as he gestured at the tanks. "Inside here...they're my actions figures."

"They can't move," the woman pointed out. "Aren't they more like inaction figures?"

The warden laughed. It was an obnoxious sound. There was no real humor in it.

"Yeah, well, you're not supposed to take them out of the package, anyway," he said. "They lose their value." He stepped closer to the Commander's tank, because he could and there was nothing the Commander could do to stop him. "I like them this way," he said.

It took the Commander a long while, but eventually he realized that the warden was just a miserable and frustrated man who hated his job, and who took it out on his prisoners. He was locked away, unable to interact with the world, almost as they were.

But he could pretend to enjoy it.

. . .

When Storm Shadow came for him, the Commander's pains and frustrations, his inner struggle to remain hopeful and not go insane, were replaced by an unbearable anticipation for immediate rescue. But that was not part of the plan. Storm Shadow wasn't invading-he was infiltrating. With Storm Shadow in the same room, yet now imprisoned along with them, the Commander was torn between hope and despair. Relief was so near. He had to force patience on himself.

Then at last his cold prison shattered. The world burst open in a rush of water and glass. He fell forward, free.

His atrophied muscles failed him and he collapsed on the floor, hard, after his fall. His bladder emptied itself as his catheter came loose in the rush of water. As soon as he got control of his arm he pulled off the oppressive helmet, but with it gone, he lost his ability to breath, and his lungs seared with sudden pain that shocked his chest. As spots covered his vision and his throat burned, he forced the helmet's visor and respiration unit, which had come loose, onto his face and took in the respiration tube attached. For a moment, he was sickened by how normal the mask felt now. He dismissed the feeling. The air tasted so good, and his pain abated somewhat. His lungs didn't care where they received their sustenance from. As he recovered, he forced himself to stand despite the weakness in his limbs. He supposed that if he had been made to wait much longer, he would have had to be carried out of here.

It was not the rescue he had expected. Definitely it was not the rescue he had wanted.

But he was standing, he was free, and his enemies were dead or dying around him. Once again, Storm Shadow had come through and made things possible. He felt a rare surge of gratitude and clapped his hand on the man.

"Never a doubt," he said, with his own voice again. It was modulated differently, but he still spoke the words, on his own, after so long without being able to speak at all. They felt powerful in his mouth.

He hid his atrophy and pain with every step. As he moved, he felt the urge to throw up, though he'd not eaten solid food since his immobilization, and forced the feeling down. Instead, the Commander chose to enjoy the solidness of the ground beneath him, the act of moving, and he refused to acknowledge the fact that his body was about to give out; that he was going to pass out. When the crash came, it was going to be terrible, but he was determined to walk outside of this hellhole of his own power.

"You look like a spaceman," Firefly said when they were in his transport and en route from the prison.

"The government isn't known for it's fashion sense," the Commander replied shortly.

"Talk about real torture, eh?"

The Commander didn't answer. Had he the strength, he might have gone for Firefly's neck. He reminded himself that nothing mattered about that place now. After so long, he had escaped and it was in ruins. The warden was dead. Destro was probably dead by now, they'd caused so much damage. The limp, damp prison suit was going to be shed as soon as they stopped and he was given something proper to wear.

Then he would feel like himself again.

. . .

When he got back to Cobra Island, the Commander had hoped to get back to work and forget. In the prison he'd determined to forget every unpleasant thing that had occurred in his life, and become stronger, without attachment to his former failings and sufferings. Yet, it was hard to forget his imprisonment, when the side-effects of the experience still wracked his body.

The US government had held him in suspension for two months, during which time he had been without normal human function. At odd times, he was overcome with exhaustion, simply from walking up a small flight of stairs, or just going about a regularly scheduled day. Solid foods couldn't be eaten and digested, and so he had to be weaned back onto them with non-solids like yogurt and purees. His urinary and excretory systems would recover, but the process of recovery was going to be slow and painful and already he was in a bad mood over it.

He hid his discomforts and played the "most dangerous man in the world." It helped that he _was_ the most dangerous man in the world, but at times, when he had to return to his room so that he could collapse, or when he was suddenly in danger of wetting himself because his body was no longer trained to hold, he did not feel as good as he had been made to look. He felt like a broken man.

So much had been done to him in his last few years of life, and he was barely thirty. He wondered how much more his body could take.

Worst of all, though, was the insomnia: the fear of falling asleep, the fear of not sleeping, the terror at losing control of himself again as the paralysis of sleep overtook him. He felt compromised and had to use drugs to force himself to get rest. The dreams he had were too realistic, comprised of endless scenarios of floating, of being held back, just a pair of eyes looking out at the world but unable to interact with it.

Only Destro had understood what he's gone through. No one else would, if he told them (not that he would ever tell anyone). Storm Shadow had only gotten a taste of what it was like. He'd had his mission to preoccupy him. There had been no helplessness in his capture and imprisonment. The suffering had been peripheral to him and the struggle had not been real.

One of his doctors suggested one of Cobra's psychologists and he shot down the idea immediately. He wasn't going to talk about the experience with anyone. The last thing he wanted was to make it real again. And he wasn't going to have some breakthrough where he talked about his feelings and pains, or whatever psychologists were always angling for. No one in Cobra should know about his suffering. Currently, his men were overjoyed to see him. In their eyes, he had been too tough for the American machine. He had gone through hell and had come out fiercer and stronger, wearing the visor issued him in prison, mocking them with its face. Cobra was in awe of him, and he didn't blame them. Despite everything, he was in awe of the fact that he was alive.

And he fed on that image of himself: the new look, the propaganda, the stories of his invincibility. He swallowed them whole, and believed them. He had to believe them. He put on toughness and resoluteness as if they were extra layers of clothing, and he wore them everywhere he went.

-He wore them _almost_ everywhere. At night it was harder. The darkness didn't care about his image and titles. It knew his other self. And it told him all about his failures. It reminded him of his weakness, and made sure he knew he could never take back what had happened to him.

In the end, he buried everything deep inside, and challenged the darkness. He chose to forget. Every day, he chose to forget, and think only of now, and the future-the only thing he cared about now and the only thing he lived for.

Eventually he could sleep again without the drugs, like a proper human being. He took rest and he awoke renewed, and he forgot everything all over again.

But when he closed his eyes, and sleep embraced him, he still felt the cold.

-END-


End file.
